Thanks for the input and encouragement, Tall Paul. On the subject of output quality, I agree that it should be very high – it would be a shame for Ossel’s fine modeling to get translated into a rough 3-D print. In his Reply #71 of April 27, Ossel mentioned that he was planning to order for himself a prototype batch of the finished models to check on their quality, so he will undoubtedly make absolutely sure that these markers meet a high production standard before he starts making them in larger quantities.
As for Corrigedor, it was one of the initial ideas which I mentioned in my Reply #56 of April 26. The problem with Corrigedor Island would be similar (but to an even greater degree) to the one that we ran into with the initial version of the Honolulu marker, which covered a large geographical area running from Pear Harbor to Diamond Head. Given how small the markers will be, and given that the modeling is (of necessity) somewhat abstracted, large geographic areas end up looking somewhat generic unless they happen to contain a large and impossible-not-to-recognize structure (as in the case of San Francisco Bay, whose Golden Gate Bridge is instantly identifiable). Corrigedor Island has an interesting saddle shape, but it doesn’t contain any large iconic structures, so the marker would basically just depict a large island, which would look odd compared to all the other markers (all of which have structures as their defining element.) Fort Drum, on the other hand, is much smaller that Corregidor Island, so it can be depicted in much more detail than Corregidor; it’s so small that its gun turrets occupy a good percentage of its surface area, so using it would be analogous to modeling a battleship-sized (and approximately battleship-shaped) structure. It has a very distinctive appearance, and the link I provided leads to some amazingly detailed shots of a scale model of Fort Drum from many different angles, so Ossel will have lots of material to work from in creating a model for it. But anyway, that’s just my opinion.
